Aim: The occupational biomonitoring of exposures to carcinogens is carried out by measuring dose (metabolites) and susceptibility biomarkers (gene polymorphisms) in two biological matrices: urine for metabolite detection and blood for genotyping. Blood is the most common substrate but has some disadvantages including: invasiveness of the harvesting technique; need of specialized staff and equipment; and high infection risk.
Methods & results: We propose our in-house approach using urine as single sample in 20 volunteers for simultaneous detection of dose and susceptibility biomarkers in order to verify efficacy and feasibility.
Conclusion: Despite the low number of subjects, interindividual and gender variability in DNA yield, urine genomic DNA is a valuable source for gene polymorphism studies when blood samples are not available. [Formula: see text].
Keywords: biomarker; blood; exposure; gene polymorphism; occupational; susceptibility; urine.